Disaster in motion: 3.4 million travelers poured into US as coronavirus pandemic erupted

[txradioguy]

An ABC News investigation offers sobering insight into how COVID-19 has spread and penetrated so broadly, so deeply and so quickly in the United States. It also helps explain why Americans, no matter where they live, must continue to heed the warnings of health officials to self distance and why the virus likely was here far earlier than first realized.

With the advent of COVID-19, the world has officially entered a dangerous new phase where a surge in international travel in recent decades served as the springboard -- jet fuel, really -- for an infectious disease potentially to kill hundreds of thousands in the U.S. and infect the global economy at breathtaking speed.

As New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo put it, "I have no doubt that the virus was here much earlier than any of us know, and we have the virus more than any other state because travelers from other parts of the world come here first."

Travel data of passengers arriving in the United States from China during the critical period in December, January and February, when the disease took hold in that country, shows a stunning 759,493 people entered the U.S.



https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/disaster-motion-34-million-travelers-poured-us-coronavirus/story?id=69933625

[IsailedawayfromFR]

One great example that indicates the dangers of globalism.

[libertybele]

More will be coming -- Mexico just started testing ....

[dfwgator]

More will be coming -- Mexico just started testing ....

So now Liberals love Walls.

[goatprairie]

One great example that indicates the dangers of globalism.

Not necessarily globalism. Just about every one of these diseases is coming from a particular country....China.  China must be stepped on severely.

[Elderberry]

ABC News by By Pierre Thomas, Jack Date, Sony Salzman, and Eric M. Strauss

An ABC News investigation offers sobering insight into how COVID-19 has spread and penetrated so broadly, so deeply and so quickly in the United States. It also helps explain why Americans, no matter where they live, must continue to heed the warnings of health officials to self distance and why the virus likely was here far earlier than first realized.

Travel data of passengers arriving in the United States from China during the critical period in December, January and February, when the disease took hold in that country, shows a stunning 759,493 people entered the U.S.

Those travelers from China included more than 228,000 Americans returning home and hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals arriving for business, academics, tourism or to visit family.

"The United States banned travel to China 12 days after the world heard there was an outbreak of severe pneumonia in Wuhan. ... The problem was, it was too late," said Dr. Todd Ellerin, chief of Infectious Disease at South Shore Health and an ABC News Consultant. "Even though there had only been 12 confirmed cases in the U.S. on the day President Trump announces the travel ban, the reality was there were many more unconfirmed cases."

More: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/disaster-motion-34-million-travelers-poured-us-coronavirus/story?id=69933625

[Smokin Joe]

Well, they're getting better at it.

In a tinfoil hat moment, one might surmise that invading America with widely dispersed little refugee kids carrying EVD-68 and a host of other pathogens novel to the US just didn't produce the desired result, so someone went to a lab in China...

[Smokin Joe]

ABC News by By Pierre Thomas, Jack Date, Sony Salzman, and Eric M. Strauss

An ABC News investigation offers sobering insight into how COVID-19 has spread and penetrated so broadly, so deeply and so quickly in the United States. It also helps explain why Americans, no matter where they live, must continue to heed the warnings of health officials to self distance and why the virus likely was here far earlier than first realized.

Travel data of passengers arriving in the United States from China during the critical period in December, January and February, when the disease took hold in that country, shows a stunning 759,493 people entered the U.S.

Those travelers from China included more than 228,000 Americans returning home and hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals arriving for business, academics, tourism or to visit family.

"The United States banned travel to China 12 days after the world heard there was an outbreak of severe pneumonia in Wuhan. ... The problem was, it was too late," said Dr. Todd Ellerin, chief of Infectious Disease at South Shore Health and an ABC News Consultant. "Even though there had only been 12 confirmed cases in the U.S. on the day President Trump announces the travel ban, the reality was there were many more unconfirmed cases."

More: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/disaster-motion-34-million-travelers-poured-us-coronavirus/story?id=69933625

Had the Chinese not buried data, burned samples, lied about transmission rates, etc., that travel shutdown might have come even earlier. As it was, there was ample whinging about it being "too much too soon", and "anti immigrant" when the shutdown did happen.

[txradioguy]

Had the Chinese not buried data, burned samples, lied about transmission rates, etc., that travel shutdown might have come even earlier. As it was, there was ample whinging about it being "too much too soon", and "anti immigrant" when the shutdown did happen.

During part of that critical period in December and January too...you had massive amounts of Chinese students going home for Christmas break and then returning month later.  Still at a time we didn't know about the virus because China was burying the info.

How many of those returning students were initial carriers?

[Smokin Joe]

During part of that critical period in December and January too...you had massive amounts of Chinese students going home for Christmas break and then returning month later.  Still at a time we didn't know about the virus because China was burying the info.

How many of those returning students were initial carriers?

You would have to go through the dead lists and their contacts to even have a guess. It's be a monumental task.

[txradioguy]

You would have to go through the dead lists and their contacts to even have a guess. It's be a monumental task.

And it's one no on wants to a even start to address either.

[Smokin Joe]

And it's one no on wants to a even start to address either.

Maybe in some dark broom closet office in some lettered agency, there's a new kid working on this in their spare time...but I doubt it.

[PeteS in CA]

So, here are some data points ABC Skews omitted:

China informed WHO of the outbreak in Wuhan of unknown cause: December 31, 2019, https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/

IOW, ABC Skews is correct that passengers arriving from China during December are potentially relevant, but no one outside of China knew this.

China/WHO claimed no evidence of  human to human transmission of corona virus: January 14, 2020,

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

First acknowledgement of human-human transmission of coronavirus: January 20, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/human-human-transmission-coronavirus-reported-china/story?id=68403105

IOW, ABC Skews is correct that passengers arriving from China during this part of January are relevant, but WHO and China misled the world as to the danger.

ABC Skews also omitted these rather relevant facts:

The US started screening arriving passengers from China: January 17, 2020, JFK, SFO, LAX https://www.businessinsider.com/new-disease-virus-china-us-airports-screening-cdc-2020-1 ; O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson January 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/21/us-screenings-coronavirus-expanded-airports-atlanta-chicago/

IOW, ABC Skews misled its readers (and viewers?) by giving the false impression that the Trump Administration's first effort to keep out infected people arriving from China became effective February 2nd. And by omitting when China acknowledged human-human transmission had happened, ABC Skews further obscures the fact that this screening of arriving passengers started at the most relevant airports 3 days before that acknowledgement, and 2 days after for at least two more major international airports.

ABC Skews also omitted the facts that at least two Dem Congress members condemned Trump's travel shutdown, and Biden labelled it "xenophobia":

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/partisan-democrats-trumps-response-coronavirus-liz-peek
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/12/biden-calls-trump-racist-for-stating-the-fact-that-wuhan-virus-began-in-china/

At what point in the number and relevance of omissions should they no longer thought to be simple ignorance, and instead evidence of agenda? One hint, IMO, is whether the omissions' effects are random or always supporting one POV. Absent contrary evidence, my opinion is that the ABC Skews article is agenda-driven.